Get Started Making Music - <AUTHOR> https://learningmusic.ableton.com/ <comment><USER3> This is incredible, I love it. I've recently switched to using Ableton exclusively for making music, it feels like more of an instrument than a computer program to me. It's so expressive and lets me make the sounds I want to hear as well as things I can't even conceive of. I can't really articulate what it is about Ableton, but I really love it and I'm so thankful that it's around.

If anyone wants more, Ableton also has a synthesizer playground site at [https://learningsynths.ableton.com/](https://learningsynths.ableton.com/).

<comment><USER4> Are you a programmer? Could you please share your creations? Why you use these tools?

I wanted to learn but I do not know where to start. Just asking out of curiosity. Thanks

<comment><USER5> I recommend starting with p5.js. If you need synchronized tracks, add Tone.js to the mix. The Ableton website also uses Tone.js. [https://tonejs.github.io/](https://tonejs.github.io/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I got into programming as a kid through a desire to make music (my first program was a "song" written in pascal, playing a series beep tones at different frequencies and durations.) I got into trackers (fast, impulse, buzz) in my teens, and then synths.

These days I have a strong preference towards "hardware"* only music making -- I spend most of my waking life staring at a screen, so I find it satisfying to step away and be hands on when creating music. The brains of my studio is a Synthstrom Deluge, which is an amazingly intuitive little gizmo - it has a built in synth and drum machine, a looper, a sampler, and a MIDI sequencer allowing you to drive all other synths in the studio. I also have an Arturia Keystep, which has a great live MIDI sequencer. Another fun gadget is the Roland RC 505, which gives you 5 independent and dubbable loops - I drive one of the two fx sends from my mixer through it, letting me build loops live from any of the other synths. Aside from those I've collected a handful of synths, both FM and analog.

(* quotes because pretty much all available synths, analog included, run on software. Most come with USB ports allowing you to connect and change settings, update firmware, etc.)

<comment><USER7> I'm getting back into making electronic music now and I've agonized over where to go the software/computer/DAW route or hardware/groovebox/sequencer. Right now, I'm doing it all on a computer using Reason and a very nice MIDI controller (Arturia KeyLab 61 mkii <3 <3 <3). But I follow the r/synthesizers subreddit and all of the pretty blinky lights and buttons look so fun and the sounds can be amazing.

The main things I like about doing it all on a computer are:

* Great screen and interface. It's easy to drag and drop and see the composition visually. Boxes like the Digitakt look like a lot of fun, but then I watch a youTube video of it and it's like 80% knob-scrolling through menus on a tiny LCD screen and that doesn't look like fun.

* Easy file and data management. It's all just files on a hard drive. It's trivial to switch between projects, back up, restore state, etc. Managing that when the data lives on flash cards across a handful of sequencers seems really stressful to me. I'd be so worried about accidentally losing a patch or something.

* It's cheaper. If I want two separate delays with different settings, I can just add a second delay. I don't have to go on Sweetwater and drop another $200. Sure, Eurorack stuff is "modular", but each module requires shelling out cash. In Reason, I can wire up huge racks of crazy stuff without spending a dime.

 _But..._ , man, the hardware stuff looks like a _lot_ of fun. I also feel like it can be a real struggle to get something that sounds rich and full out of Reason. I can get there, but it takes effort. It's default sound tends to be kind of brittle and dry, which is to be expected from software but can be uninspiring. (I should maybe check out a different DAW, but I know Reason well and exploring different software is a whole other can of worms.) With a lot of hardware gear — at least judging by videos online — you power it up and it sounds fat immediately.

I think what really matters the most to me is finding a path that gets me finishing music I like quickly. I don't want to just noodle, but I also want something fun and immediate enough to stay in the moment. I'm still not sure if software or hardware (or a mixture of both?) is the right path for that.

Any thoughts on how to dip my toes in the water with hardware to see if that's a better fit?

<comment><USER8> _> Any thoughts on how to dip my toes in the water with hardware to see if that's a better fit?_

How much money is "dip my toes"? If you're talking less than a hundred bucks for some cool toys, you can buy Korg Volca and one of PO-x0 series from Teenage Engineering.

If you're thinking $500+ you can get something like Alesis Micron (designed by Bret Victor, BTW) or Korg Electribe, or Elektron Model:Sample. If you're fine with real-time recording, you can instead get something like Behringer Neutron or Kors Minilogue. You can make entire tracks on those even if all you have is a linear recorder.

If you're in ~$1000+ range you can buy Analog Four or OP-1. The former is a very practical machine, the latter is a marvel of design, very fun and great for experiments.

Or you could go for a workstation. FA-06 has pretty good UX, although it's closer to DAW-on-a-keyboard than other things I mentioned here.

Find a device you like and learn it inside out. It's a very rewarding experience. Also, try to buy a used device. You can save tons of money this way.

<comment><USER9> Using hardware now is like using a land line with a rotary phone to make phone calls... It's pretty outdated to use hardware unless it's a unique or live instrument. Also if you use Hardware, you end up with a lot of complications in terms of recording your music into digital format, and you'll likely lose the things you create because hardware can easily get lost, stolen, reset, etc... Hardware interfaces are nothing like modern software interfaces now, so you'll also be learning a lot of stuff, but not stuff that allows you to jump into the modern world of music production.

If you are just starting out, in my opinion, the best way to get into working things out is to just dive deep into a software based music DAW, you can try Garage Band or Fruity Loops, which have a slightly lower learning curve than other tools, there are also tons of tutorials on youtube. Ableton is a bit overdone and technical as a starting point, but then again, most valuable skills don't have very easy entry/starting points in life.

<comment><USER10> Jeepers, I know your comment is coming from an electronic music mindset, but to those who learned audio engineering by setting up drum kits, amplifiers, pianos and mic'ing them by hand are probably having a bit of a chuckle at your "hardware" comment.

No malintention meant here, and as far as electronic instruments go I agree with what you're saying, I just know several drummers and guitar players who would by quite incensed by the comparison with their instruments to rotary phones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ableton is great and paved the way for a more creative and intuitive workflow! I switched from Cubase very early on and never looked back. That is, until I found Bitwig ([https://www.bitwig.com](https://www.bitwig.com)) which supports Linux! They also deserve a shout out taking it even further!

<comment><USER12> Bitwig looks really promising. But how is the VST landscape? Is it even supported?

EDIT: sorry, my question was about whether _Linux_ supports VST. I would assume that Bitwig did at v0.1 :-)

<comment><USER13> Longtime Bitwig user here that switched there after Ableton 9 which I used since the very start.

Bitwig is quite similar to Ableton in terms of capabilities, I never tried this myself, but there seems to be a way (assuming you want Windows VSTs on Linux) [https://answers.bitwig.com/questions/624/vst-windows-on- linu...](https://answers.bitwig.com/questions/624/vst-windows-on-linux-with- bitwig)

I am perfectly happy with the built-in stuff however. Because of bitwigs extremely strong modulation engine the standard effects are probably the most powerful and expressive ones out there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Talking about synths, I can definitely recommend VCV Rack [0], an open-source virtual modular synth!

What I mostly love is that through plugins you can find virtual versions of existing hardware modules!

[0]: [https://vcvrack.com/](https://vcvrack.com/)

<comment><USER15> Looks like many of the modules need a purchase.

<comment><USER16> A lot of amazing ones don't, though. It's really worth digging in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As a dev, I find Ableton incredibly frustrating. The Live Object Model (LOM) allows custom automation and software control. But it's half-closed, and half- open.

Access is through Max for Live, which is a dataflow language "programmed" by joining little object blocks to other object blocks - like Scratch. There's unofficial Python support, but it's poorly documented.

Many things are possible, but many other things aren't possible - even though they're available on Push, so obviously the hooks are there.

It would make me unbelievably happy if Ableton opened up the LOM and included a properly documented hook for absolutely every important feature - <USER2> one that could be used from any language, maybe via OSC, rather than M4L.

To be fair Live at least has a LOM, while other sequencers/DAWs don't. So that's a plus. But it's still a shame it isn't more complete - because that would make all kinds of cool things possible.

<comment><USER18> If you use OSC you could be interested in the DAW I develop: [https://ossia.io](https://ossia.io) ; a part of its object model is accessible through it, hadn't had the time to expose everything yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is great!, I thought they were only gonna do a simple piano roll and start/stop, they touch on pretty good topics including song structure, chords, modes, scales, diatonic triads, voicing, etc. This is a pretty good intro to getting into Ableton Live really. I come from using Cubase and honestly the new Live is very capable for building fluid songs, it has so many features now and the interface makes it really easy to draw automation curves, set different timings, route midi, build drum kits, etc.

</comment><comment><USER20> I really tried to get into Ableton. I found a Push 2 at a pawn shop and while I can say that the push 2 controller is pretty damn amazing and turns Ableton into a pretty cool device, I can't get the arrangement to feel natural to me. I am a long term linear sequencer user, and Logic is pretty much muscle memory to me now. However, Ive used FL studio since version 1.x and that also feels much easier to use than Ableton. I can create patterns super easily on Ableton but then turning that into a song is just clunky to me.

<comment><USER21> I came from CUBASE and it took me a couple attempts to get used to ableton

Frankly thinking of it as a sequencer is a limiting mental model.

Think of it as a instrument to jam with.

When I used cubase I spend about 20% of the time with jamming together a basic idea and then 80% with arranging.

Ableton flipped that for me...now I spend 80% of the time jamming (and loving it) and only all the way at the end I quickly create the arrangement once I am already super familiar with all the parts I created during jamming.

It's had a really super positive on my creative quality!

<comment><USER20> Ive heard this from quite a few folks. I dont do a lot of ITB recording though, so that may be my problem. I mainly use my 2 SPs (SP-1200/Sp-16) for the jamming part along with keys/guitar/bass. By the time I fire up software the idea is already there, and I want to arrange it.

<comment><USER22> If you already have a solid OTB workflow, Ableton won't really give you much tbh

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I love seeing how the big brands are picking up web audio. I refuse to work on anything else these days, and it's easier than I thought when I started. Built 5 web games using tone.js for Red Bull Mind Gamers last year and just launched a site that auto generates unlimited royalty free mp3s using web audio for a dollar[1]. [1] [https://strikefreemusic.com](https://strikefreemusic.com)

<comment><USER24> Do you have any open source work? I've been playing around with web audio applications myself and would love to poke around.

<comment><USER23> I don't unfortunately. If I find some time I'll have a think about what I could open source.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> A thread from 2017: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14299628](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14299628)

<comment><USER26> And one from 2019: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20272346](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20272346)

<comment><USER25> Good catch! We should have marked this one a dupe in that case, but missed it and will leave it now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> prefer renoise, it's cheap and super easy to work with :D. Never actually liked the workflow of ableton (personal flavour i suppose), its audio engine is fairly decent, but imho for 500ish euros it costs to get the suite it's a bit expensive for what u get.

Cubase has a much superior audio and processing engine like Logic Pro for mac users, and is in a similar pricing range. It has less quality built-in dps etc. ,but most DAWs lack on that.

Renoise for like 50 euros is super cheap in comparison, and most dps it has have awesome performance and quality.

That being said, ableton does offer a better 'live' environment for live/performance based things.

on workflows, bitwig is really the innovator, as it combines workflows from different daws like cubase and ableton and lets the user itself choose its work-flow instead of forcing it upon the user.

<comment><USER28> funnily enough, the founder/creator of renoise was working for Ableton in the early years of renoise

<comment><USER29> Is there a source for this? I never heard that before, though I know Renoise started out as a fork of NoiseTrekker so to speak:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renoise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renoise)

> I started coding 2 years ago with this project, so I'm more musician than > coder I started making music with protracker

[https://web.archive.org/web/20020803155023/http://noerror.sc...](https://web.archive.org/web/20020803155023/http://noerror.scene.org/people.php?id_p=3)

<comment><USER28> I was running the website you've linked to (noerror.org) with a friend, and I have met Taktik.

He is listed under his real name (Eduard Mueller) here in 2004 on the ableton website:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20040816022620fw_/http://www.abl...](https://web.archive.org/web/20040816022620fw_/http://www.ableton.com/index.php?main=people)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20040914164146/http://www.ableto...](https://web.archive.org/web/20040914164146/http://www.ableton.com/pages/company/people/people/eduard/eduard.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Very cool and interesting website.

I recently bought a Maschine MK2 to get into the music making thing. It surprised me how easy to use it is.

My wife is a professional acoustic musician, and although she firstly was a bit hesitant with this 'instrument' she quickly turned around. And we started making music together.

It's perfect for me since it is very well arranged, the buttons make sense in my head.

I play a bit of guitar and always have trouble making sense of the notes in my head.

<comment><USER31> I'm a Maschine user as well, but I've got a background in guitar, having played in rock bands from my early teens through mid-20s.

I've always been intrigued by MIDI, but always felt "limited" by piano-style keyboard MIDI controllers. Maschine really helped me break open my writers block and made playing music _fun_ again.

I can put Maschine in front of my 5 year old and he can figure it out. It makes more sense to him than my 61-key MIDI controller does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> On a side note, this was written (partly) in Elm: [https://twitter.com/abletondev/status/861580662620508160](https://twitter.com/abletondev/status/861580662620508160)

<comment><USER33> I'm fairly sure Elm was ripped out and replaced with TS later on.

<comment><USER34> Yeah, not sure if this is the same but here's a tweet about some recent tech usage [https://twitter.com/AbletonDev/status/1143880805317525506](https://twitter.com/AbletonDev/status/1143880805317525506)

"Running on Web Audio, WebAssembly and WebGL. Made with three.js, Tone.js, anime.js and React using TypeScript and much "

<comment><USER35> That tweet is about the newer learningmusic.ableton.com. Apparently a different project, different stack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Ableton works how my brain works for music. It's lovely :)

<comment><USER36> If you wanna hear some outputs: [https://soundcloud.com/funkitekture](https://soundcloud.com/funkitekture)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I've been working on an IDE for music composition. I'll launch soon [http://ngrid.io](http://ngrid.io).

<comment><USER38> Is there a way to try it or learn more before signup/email list sub?

I started composing about a year ago using general tools like CuBase and Garage Band and wow, it's tedious, even when the initial sketch is worked out before hand on a keyboard.

There are just a ton of ideas that come to mind on how it could be an order of magnitude more efficient. Maybe there are apps that don't focus so much on production, that do a better job solely for the writing music part?

<comment><USER39> I am not sure how familiar you are with notation, but you might wanna consider Dorico, it is focused more on writing than on production bus still has a lot of features to make it sound pleasant (as opposed to other notation programs like Finale or Sibelius.) It is a sort of notation program / DAW hybrid that I think is a really interesting crossover / niche. Another suggestion might be to check out Synfire. (I have no experience with Synfire though, yet)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Ableton is top notch but for me nothing beats coming up with melodies in FL Studio's "Piano Roll", a lot of fun times spent in that program.

<comment><USER41> FLStudio has a great community and Image-Line deserve kudos for their "lifetime" license model. I used it extensively for a few years and found it solid and productive. It's maybe closer to Ableton than Cubase.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Bit of a side note, but I've been playing with [http://sonic- pi.net/](http://sonic-pi.net/) and it's teaching me so much about synthesizers AND music (even though I have a bit of a background in both).

</comment><comment><USER43> I want to make music that sounds like the band "Chinese Man".

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqjeNSNuNPM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqjeNSNuNPM) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9QU5-9DFC4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9QU5-9DFC4)

Can we do it using Ableton? How does one even approach trying to do something like this?

<comment><USER44> Yes, you could definitely make this in Ableton. Basically, all you need is samples (recordings of instrument sounds, either individual notes that you put in whatever order you like, or recordings of someone playing a whole musical phrase, preferably something that loops well) and a sequencer of some kind, which is the main function of Ableton. There are also effects and mixing and mastering techniques that can drastically change the sound of music, but all you need to get started are some samples and a sequencer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> It's really awesome Ableton is going in this direction. Live is a beast, but it's a quite intimidating beast if you don't have experience working with DAWs and music software in general. I worked there for three years, and couldn't bring myself to learn the basics. Tutorials like these will definitely make it easier to pick the basics and start off with Live with more confidence.

<comment><USER46> how was working there? I did a code challenge there last year but I didn't make it to the next round. Still kind of bummed about it.

<comment><USER45> When I was there it was a great place to work: Nice people, a lot of perks, beautiful office etc. Especially if you are into music, you can learn and collaborate with pretty much everyone, as making and listening to music was and is pervasive within the company. The problem was that I was in the web team, and that was not their actual focus. They have grown considerably, though, so I'm sure it has changed at least in some respects.

<comment><USER46> Sounds about right. I interviewed for a web position too. But I was really curious about the software and how I can potentially transition into it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I've been noodling with iOS music apps and MIDI hardware as a sort of ramp-up, and tried Ableton 10 Lite for a bit this summer. Really cool.

Notes: [https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2019/09/07/1140](https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2019/09/07/1140)

</comment><comment><USER48> Fruity Loops, Cubase, Reason, Reaper, Cantabile Performer, Presonus Studio One, Ableton, OpenMPT, Jazz and Logic before apple... I love to have a good sequencer on my hands to handle the recording of my creative spirits. I also love to look back in time and stumbled over some old music programs on the amiga system. I would love to learn more about working with tracker based sequencing but iam faster done in a modern daw. Presonus Studio One is a good DAW. Ideas sketching via webtools is also awesome. I love me my little beepbox.co [https://tinyurl.com/y6rr2rok](https://tinyurl.com/y6rr2rok) At the end it only counts if you have fun, how to control or create, do things with a digital working station.

</comment><comment><USER49> No discussion of Ableton should omit high profile users like Imogen Heap or Zoe Keating.

<comment><USER50> Zillions of electronic artists use Ableton.

Although I like Imogen Heap, I don't see why she's so deserving of a special mention.

<comment><USER49> You seem fun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Ironically for the name, ableton turns out not to be accessible for the blind.

<comment><USER52> It's not exactly _easy_ to make an "accessible" DAW. Especially not when you consider that there probably isn't a huge market of blind music producers relative to the amount of work it would take to, say, make a somewhat-sane interface for a screen reader for a program as complex as ableton. The interface is very complex as is, and would almost certainly require some re- jiggering before it would work well. I doubt enough people would buy t to ever make it a worth-while investment.

<comment><USER53> I just did an interview with a (blind) professor from Berklee that run an assistive music technology program and lab that has been using Pro Tools for quite some time. He's released a pile of scripts called "Flo Tools"[0] to assist with visually impaired use.

[0]: [http://flotools.org/](http://flotools.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I use Ableton for many many years now. Did this remix in one day on vacation just using the acapella and NO external plugins.

[https://soundcloud.com/hit8run/happyathens- finetune/s-dWSSq](https://soundcloud.com/hit8run/happyathens-finetune/s-dWSSq)

So you can achieve alot with the productive workflow of ableton. I also bought Logic but never finished a full song with it and always felt restricted by it's workflow.

</comment><comment><USER55> Speaking of in browser sequencers/synths: [https://www.audiotool.com/](https://www.audiotool.com/)

</comment><comment><USER56> Intro page vaguely reminds me of DropMix, which has unfortunately been EoL'd.

</comment><comment><USER57> There's a delay when trying to hit stop on any of the boxes. It's really quite frustrating.

I really like this idea. This is something I want to explore as a non-music person.

<comment><USER58> Checkout Pocket Operators from Teenage Engineering if you haven't seen them already. Its a lovely (to me) line of physical synths that are quite inexpensive < $30 USD and also as a non-music person really got me started down a path of wanting to learn more.

<comment><USER59> POs were a bit too limited for me. The sequencer isn't powerful enough to make anything more complex than basic chiptunes.

Not to diss on PO. I was super hyped about it as well, and would have liked to know about its limitations before buying it. Anyone of the numerous phone apps would be a cheaper and better replacement for a PO.

What got me started in music was Garageband. It's free (for macos users) and quite simple and intuitive. It's not as fully-featured as something like Ableton, but quite capable for making professional-level songs.

<comment><USER60> It's pretty remarkable to see what people do with Garageband even on iPhones.

I bought an interface for my guitar ($20) and have played around with Garageband on my iPad and just playing with the amps is a lot of fun. It's a very low friction way to record myself playing while practicing and since I'm using headphones, I'm not irritating everybody around me with my terrible playing.

One complaint about Garageband (and Cubase - a copy of that came with my Yamaha amp), is the lack of tutorials for people like me. I'd love a start-to- finish tutorial for recording a toy song that includes recording my instrument on top of simple drums and maybe one or two other virtual instruments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> This is awesome. I used to think music was no big deal but after playing with this I realize I have no musical talent whatsoever.

</comment><comment><USER62> Pretty cool! It's like FLStudio-lite in the browser

</comment><comment><USER63> Can someone here say more about Ableton as employer?

<comment><USER64> I have friends who work there in a number of areas and colleagues who have freelanced for them (convolution reverb for example). It is pretty nice from what I hear and the focus is very much enabling creativity before profit.

<comment><USER63> and how's their salary compared to other Berlin companies?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> see [https://mixart.ist](https://mixart.ist) which is a great alternative.

</comment><comment><USER66> Trust me, the world is better off without the sort of music I would make.

</comment><comment><USER29> Pro/Fasttracker in the browser: [https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/](https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/)

And it can load modules directly from modarchive and modules.pl, too! e.g

[https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?file=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.m...](https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?file=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.modarchive.org%2Fdownloads.php%3Fmoduleid%3D75418)

FWIW, that's how I learned making music, just learning the commands and making things I like by ear. Though being a kid with no internet probably helped.

<comment><USER67> I might be missing something here but I click record, play some notes with the A-Z keys, stop the recording, and when I click play nothing happens (I hear no audio) however with the demos I hear the audio.

Any ideas what am I missing?

EDIT: I was supposed to add a sample (in the Edit Samples tab) in case anyone was confused like me.

<comment><USER29> Loading a song and using its samples is best to start out with IMO; not just beause it's easier, but because the instruments also tend to be "in tune" (relative to each other)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> You can get a lot of the functionality of Ableton under Linux, albeit using other, modular tools.

seq24 for sequencing/block-style arranging. Reaper for recording tracks. VCVRack for synthesis, Hydrogen for drums.

In fact, its kind of amazing what tools a budding musician has available to them - for free - in the Linux ecosphere. I hope to see more articles describing these tools soon .. or maybe I should do one of my own ..

</comment><comment><USER69> well fuck me that wsa amazing

</comment><comment><USER70> This site is the reason bookmarked were made for</comment>


Clinging to Outlook, Only 25% of Yahoo Employees Willing to Eat Mail "Dogfood" - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20131124/while-users-lament-only-25-percent-of-yahoos-willing-eat-mail-dogfood-memo/?mod=tweet

<comment><USER3> Until recently I was working for a big software company (40k+ employees), where we were also using Outlook as the main communication tool (+ Lync recently).

The interesting thing was, that each person has found an own solution to the massive amount of information you need to keep and look up later. There were of course wikis, portals and stuff but most of the people always kept the most relevant information in their inboxes.

This would manifest in: \- Folders with "Dummy"-Mails, used for storing notes \- Actually using the notes function \- 4 or 5 level deep folder hierarchies of mails \- "Complex" categories on mails for finding information

I have no insight into the processes at Yahoo, but I suspect at least some of the things work similar over there. The problem is, migrating these kind of (mostly unstructured) information is painful and could take weeks - <USER2> the new mail system would even support such an abuse.. If there is no alternative in place, the next step would possibly be One Note, or worse Notepad.

I also think Microsoft missed a huge opportunity by not positioning Outlook as more than a e-mail tool but a shared information system. I even worked in a team for a few month, which developed a "Mail Publish" solution, where you've got a button in your Outlook which would upload your mail to a server and index it, so the whole team could get to the information..

(disclaimer: my startup depends on Outlook, but this is less relevant to this specific problem)</comment>


See How Virtual Desktops Let You Get More Done in Less Time - <AUTHOR> http://nickjanetakis.com/blog/see-how-virtual-desktops-let-you-get-more-done-in-less-time <comment><USER2> IMO it's like Conky or Compiz. When you get it you are amazed, then optimize it to purposely create a better work flow and soon after that it wears off and you get back to your "classic" approach.

As Linux user i never had no workspaces, and honestly i used it more when windows managers still looked like windows 98 (Gnome 2, KDE, XFCE, ...). But since Window Managers evolved into something much more usable (New KDE, Gnome 3, Unity...) i barely find a use case where it makes sense.

It may is worth it on a mac tho, i "lose" windows here way to often.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been using them for about 6 months now and I don't see them as a novelty that wears off.

I still use them constantly because it's way better than not. They save a non- trivial amount of time every day.

If anything, I use them because most window managers are pretty bad.

Virtual desktops are a great way to give you a glance-able view at many tiled window set ups without having to use a tiled window manager.

It's very similar to a t-mux set up where you might have a few work spaces, except you're not limited to terminals or using buggy tiled window managers.

<comment><USER2> Ok now we are going a bit far ;) i use tiled wm-plugins/terminals/editors to have more in my view, what workspaces certainly do not provide. I used my Compiz cube for over a year (I dont know if you know compiz, but back in the glorious days of linux there was a 3d cube where each side was a workspace/virtual desktop). And i remember making fun of my windows friends for not having workspaces.

Maybe its really just Gnome 3 that made it somehow redundant for me so i don't use it anymore. The way it groups windows passively and the different ways to access those is just (IMO) much more comfortable, and you never happen to create situations where you want to use both workspaces at once, because you only have one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Workspaces give you a way to have multiple screens of "things".

So instead of tiling 9 windows on a single screen and being crazy distracted, I can tile 3 things on a single screen and switch between workspaces when I'm ready to context switch.

I remember compiz cube from way back and seeing the youtube videos haha. The animation is gimmicky but the idea of workspace separation isn't.

What does Gnome 3 offer that make workspaces redundant? I use xfce with xubuntu.

<comment><USER2> Its hard to explain properly (doesn't help that english is not my first language). Its small little gimmics that make the whole experience. The way windows present themself next to each other when your press the Super key and the way how this sorting is somehow consistent. They way how the sort order can change based on the focused window. The way ALT+TAB offers grouping if wanted. Its really worth the try. I never felt as focused before and my mac at work feels like a bad joke UX wise.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I'm a huge fan of xfce but I'll spin up a Gnome 3 based VM later to test it out first hand.

I'm not convinced it'll replace virtual desktops, but hopefully I'm proven wrong!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amazon and Brita team up for Wi-Fi water pitchers - chris-at http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/29/11131150/amazon-dash-brita-water-pitcher-filters <comment><AUTHOR> Annnnd What is the point behind this?</comment>


The mice with human tumours: Growing pains for a popular cancer model - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05890-8 <comment><USER2> That's really sad. Animal testing is unethical and should be abolished.</comment>


Apple buys popular weather app Dark Sky and plans to shut down Android versions - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/31/apple-buys-popular-weather-app-dark-sky.html <comment><USER2> Press released discussed in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22739839](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22739839)</comment>


iSense – SciFi short (Digital Health) - <AUTHOR> http://narnestel.blogspot.com/2016/11/isense_10.html <comment><USER2> I liked the way you drive the story, it feels really natural. If you want one advice, don't stop writing/reading. The second advice I could give you is: dont make boring shorts. People want dystopias and black stuff if it is about tech. Try to get the reader to the point in which he cant stop reading. Good luck in your journey.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the advice, appreciate it.</comment></comment>


Getting Started with Docker - <AUTHOR> http://serversforhackers.com/articles/2014/03/20/getting-started-with-docker/ I saw that people were looking for better getting started docs for Docker, so I put together the post I wish I found on Docker when I was digging into it. <comment><USER2> This skips over the hard part: managing docker containers. Poking a hole directly to the container is a leaky abstraction. A reverse proxy like HAProxy or Varnish should be sitting in front of the container.

Once you have the reverse proxy setup the next problem that arises is routing to containers based on the domain. Now your HAProxy or Varnish config is going to get bloated and every time you deploy a container the config needs to be modified and reloaded. By this time you might be looking at chef or puppet for automating the config generation.

Chef and puppet are not simple to learn. They have their own set of quirks (like unreliable tooling support on Windows). I'm in the process of conquering this, but I hope one day there will be a simpler way.

<comment><USER3> This is a great point. The initial Docker examples make everything seem easy, but we blew way past our estimated time in integrating docker into our workflow because of the points you mention. I am still happy with the choice to use docker though and our team will be better at server administration in the future.

One thing about this getting started guide is that it recommends the Phusion base image which boots init. That seems to go against the best practices outlined in a recent article by Michael Crosby - [http://crosbymichael.com/dockerfile-best-practices- take-2.ht...](http://crosbymichael.com/dockerfile-best-practices-take-2.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice, hadn't read those. Thanks! I was wondering about that, but still need a solution for logging, cron jobs, and similar (perhaps running those on the host machine is the answer)

<comment><USER3> I am still finding good solutions for those too, and trying to add some concepts to my toolbox like orchestration, service discovery, proxies, data containers, ambassador containers, and so on. It's hard for me to wrap my head around the different recommended ways to use docker compared to my initial expectations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For non-Paas use cases (for example, a development server with a bunch of projects) I find schroot (1) simpler and more productive. For example, you can use the normal `service stop / service start` instead of writing manually init scripts, and you don't get stuck with sharing directories, which I found extremely tricky with Docker (for example, I couldn't start correctly mysql with supervisor sharing the mysql db directory). But Docker is in early development, so I think it will become easier in the future.

1: [https://wiki.debian.org/Schroot](https://wiki.debian.org/Schroot)

<comment><AUTHOR> I've had the same issue with MySQL. It's an issue of timing - You install MySQL, and the MySQL data directory has its data/default databases. Then you share the directory with Docker, and the data lib directory is wiped out (the files don't exist on the host machine, after all). Getting it right in an automated way is a Hard Problem™.

As of now, I'm keeping data persisted within the Container, which I don't necessarily like. I would _love_ to hear a good solution on that.

<comment><USER5> Here's a dockerfile setup I wrote for Postgres which uses a 'data container' for the entire Postgres database: [https://github.com/codelittinc/dockerfiles/tree/master/postg...](https://github.com/codelittinc/dockerfiles/tree/master/postgres)

The gist of it is that you explicitly tell your DB container that there will be a shared directory on the container at runtime. This allows you to chown the directory before the data container is added.

Then, when you're running, use --volumes-from `$data-container-name` and it'll work. Want an article on it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, thanks. I can figure it out from that example most likely, but an article would never hurt :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> CoreOS experience designer here. I'm looking for testers to check out the general platform and test some of our new features. All skill levels are fine – new to docker & CoreOS, new to CoreOS only, etc. I'm happy to work with your schedule and make it as quick or involved as you're comfortable with. Anything from emailing a few thoughts to Skype to hanging out in our office in SF for the day.

Email: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been using docker for a couple of months, but we have only just begun experimenting with actual deployment in a test environment on ec2. Right now we use it primarily as configuration/dependency management. We're a small team and it seems to make setup easier, at least so far. Two examples: the first is a log sink container, in which we run redis + logstash. The container exposes the redis and es/kibana ports, and the run command maps these to the host instance. Setting up a new log server means launching an instance, and then pulling and starting the container. The second example is elasticsearch. We have a container set up to have cluster and host data injected into it by the run command, so we pull the container, start it, and it joins the designated cluster. The thing I like about this is the declarative specification of the dependencies, and the ease of spinning up a new instance. As I say, just experimenting so far, and I don't know how optimal all of this is yet, so would love any feedback.

One last quick thought on internal discovery. A method we're playing with on ec2 is to use tags. On startup a container can use a python script and boto to pull the list of running instances within a region that have certain tags and tag values. So we can tag an instance as an es cluster member, for example, and our indexer script can find all the running es nodes and choose one to connect to. We can use other tags to specify exposed ports and other information. Again, just messing around and still not sure of the optimal approach for our small group, but these are some interesting possibilities.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a copy and improvement of the article I wrote last month, even down to the breakdown of "What's that command doing?" with `docker run -t -i ubuntu /bin/bash`.

Glad it was useful enough to spur an improved article, at least.

[http://tonyhb.com/unsuck-your-vagrant-developing-in-one- vm-w...](http://tonyhb.com/unsuck-your-vagrant-developing-in-one-vm-with- vagrant-and-docker)

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been sitting on my original since December. [https://www.dropbox.com/s/lf0qi70vlglasgv/Screenshot%202014-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/lf0qi70vlglasgv/Screenshot%202014-03-21%2010.40.07.png)

<comment><USER5> Hey, no problem at all! Just surprised to see how similar we were in our styles. Happy that there are more resources popping up now!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can someone tell me what's the point of this? (I seriously love to know, not criticizing it.) Why would I need to have docker containers to install stuff on them instead of just installing stuff directly on host?

Let's say I develop a new web app, I would install NodeJS, PostgreSQL and such on my machine. Before I deploy the app for the first time, I'll install them in the necessary servers. Now, it looks like I would need to do the same, except adding the step of building Docker containers.

I think I must miss something important here because the number of GitHub stars for Docker is impressive and this is usually a good indication of the usefulness of the project.

<comment><USER6> Docker containers let you isolate the entire environment for your app. Let's say your running an app on CoreOS in a container that needs python 1.2.3.

On your laptop you can build and test the new version of the app that needs python 1.2.4. Once you decide that's ready to go, you can push the new container onto the same CoreOS machine, so it's running both containers. Without the containers, running two versions of python on the same box isn't possible. If you had a chef script that updated to 1.2.4, you'd possibly break every other app on the box.

Containers also let you do some cool things like sign and verify a container before it's launched on the box. It should be bit for bit the same on your laptop as it is on the remote machine. Containers also boot within seconds, much faster than a VM. There have been a few tech demos running around that actually spin up a new container with a web server to service every web request, just to show how fast you can boot them. 300ms is pretty long for a web request, but it's the idea that counts.

<comment><USER8> Thanks, this is good info. For NodeJS and Rails, I use nvm and rvm, so didn't have any problem with multiple environments. But yeah, I see your point that Docker can help in such scenario or when there's no equivalent of nvm/rvm.

<comment><USER9> Have a dependency on conflicting libc is a favourite problem that can be difficult to solve without some form of container (vm, chroot or something "in between" like lxc/jails). Another is dependency on different kernel (either major version on same os, or dependency on a different kernel, like freebsd), which docker (by design) doesn't solve.

I don't use ruby much, but it doesn't strike me as very easy to work with/very reliable for production deployment. But that might be me. How well does it handle dependencies on conflicting modules with parts written in c?

Perhaps the most important point is that (when it makes sense) a docker setup might allow easier horizontal scale-out, and or redundancy.

All that said, keeping things simple is generally a good thing. But sometimes adding complexity in one area makes the overall system less complex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > with Macintosh's kernel

I misread that as "Microsoft's..." and got excited since I run a build farm that's 70% windows and wish I could use docker but it's not worth having two systems (Container and VMs).

Also isn't that complete wrong? Macintosh is not an OS or company. It was one of Apple's product lines, long ago.

</comment><comment><USER11> VM CAN share binaries/libs/etc (otherwise called files)

also, VMs CAN "share" memory. ie VMs can dedup memory between themselves. On Linux at least.

Not saying docker/lxc and all things namespaces are bad at all - but setting things straight. VMs can do this:)

Checkout KSM for memory "sharing" and any overlay-style file system that is mounted by VMs (this one works exactly the same as when you use namespaces/docker/lxc in fact)

</comment><comment><USER12> Shouldn't "setting up a correct init process" be part of every "getting started with docker?" [http://phusion.github.io/baseimage- docker/](http://phusion.github.io/baseimage-docker/)

<comment><USER13> No. That guide assumes you're running a bunch of processes in the container (or even a full system). That's not the case at all when you're doing an "application container" that doesn't need its own cron daemon, ssh daemon, etc.

Containers can be much leaner than the kind discussed there.

<comment><USER14> I am one of the authors behind that guide. That guide does _not_ assume that you're running "a bunch of processes" or "even a full system" in the container. Even if you're only running 1 process, it's still highly relevant.

The main point is the Unix process model and how zombie processes work. Things are just not setup properly if your system doesn't handle that properly. And except by using specialized apps (e.g. the my_init system used in baseimage- docker), it just _isn 't_ set up properly.

One of the Docker authors, shykes, stated: "In short, regular applications don't expect to be pid 1, and generally speaking they shouldn't."

The other point is to be able to login to the container to perform one-off sysadmin and debugging work. There _was_ lxc-attach for that, but now that Docker supports multiple backends, SSH is the only portable solution that works no matter which Docker backend you use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wish that people would stop writing tutorials on "getting started" with Docker, and actually start writing up examples of how to work with multiple containers, hosts, and linking.

That's the part that I (and I'm sure other beginners) get totally stuck on. Anyone can do docker commit/pull.

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually haven't found many getting started articles, which is why I wrote this. However I fully plan on writing up more interesting stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> this is the first time I have heard of coreOS - seems to be custom built for containers like docker. are there downsides to doing system updates this way and not having a package manager, just relying on containers for everything? Seems great in concept.

<comment><USER17> I don't know how well this works as soon as you have a single file that needs multiple edits to support multiple images.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well good morning hackers.. This has been around for ages...

[http://www.xenproject.org/](http://www.xenproject.org/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Would it be better to use FreeBSD and their Jails mechanism for all of this?

<comment><USER9> Joyent would probably claim that kvm+zfs would be best. But if you don't have kernel support for jails, then no, using jails isn't better. It's not an option. Oracle would probably claim solaris zones are better (and arguably, they'd be right).

Jails are (as far as I can tell) great -- but not so great that freebsd didn't include a new hvm assisted hypervisor in freebsd 10 (BSD Hypervisor (bhyve)).

LXC in many ways _are_ *bsd jails for Linux.</comment></comment>


Why are some companies migrating from Ruby to Clojure for performance? - <AUTHOR>

I don't know the Ruby platform, but I am hearing from some companies that they are migrating from Ruby to Clojure or another JVM-language for performance. What are the problems these companies face with growing Ruby systems, that are solved on the JVM? I would like to get some insight into this. <comment><USER2> Performance!

You're answering your own question in the title. At a guess, they found their stacks were not performant enough and so they decided to switch to the JVM in the hopes that that would alleviate the problem they had.

Do you have any examples of such switches? Why not ask the people that you are talking to in those companies?

<comment><USER3> Puppet Labs is one and mostly performance. There's trouble in Configuration Management land, mostly due to the (un)scalability of Ruby in some parts of the stack.

PuppetDB is Clojure, there's a cFacter now (C++11), I'm pretty sure we'll see a cAgent too and I also expect that we'll see them turning to JRuby+Clojure to lift out some parts of the Puppet Master.</comment></comment>


Bubble Sort: An Archaeological Algorithmic Analysis - <AUTHOR> https://users.cs.duke.edu/~ola/bubble/bubble.html <comment> yoz-y For me it seems that bubble sort is mostly popular because it is very intuitive. It is the typical way of how would one sort a bunch of heavy bags with only scales, which is another question that comes up often.

<comment><USER2> I suspect that if you took students who knew just enough programming to write a sort, but with no prior exposure to sorting algorithms, and asked them to write a sort, many would come up with a bubble sort (I think that was true of me.) If so, then it is worth mentioning simply to point out its inefficiency. Also, the bubble sort serves a useful pedagogical purpose for introducing the concept of time complexity analysis, especially if my guess is correct, as then it does not look like a contrived example.

After all, the goal of computing education is not just to churn out mechanical algorithm-implementors, and it is hard to teach good design without something to compare it to.

<comment><USER3> Bubble sort is _still_ the only sort I will write by hand. It's fast to write and easy to read. It's in-place and stable. It has a stupidly low coefficient in front of that n² that keeps it in the running until about 100 elements.

Once I get beyond that, I select a pre-written sort that's tailored to my needs. Do I need stability? Do I need in-place? Do I need a local copy at all, or can I stream the results?

<comment> s-phi-nl Do you know of any source that compares the coefficients for bubble sort, insertion sort, and selection sort? This sounds interesting.

<comment><USER3> Given that those are all average case n² algorithms, the article's figure is probably a good representation:

[https://users.cs.duke.edu/~ola/bubble/bubble.html#fig:quadso...](https://users.cs.duke.edu/~ola/bubble/bubble.html#fig:quadsort)

Mannykannot is correct that the full coefficient is dependent on the machine and exact code. However, we can make some refinements based on the algorithms alone.

Bubble sort is n² / 2, as it processes one less element per pass. This is a pretty common pattern, so it's good to remember.

Insertion sort starts at zero elements and processes one extra element per pass. So it's also n² / 2\. However, _on average_ each pass only needs to process half the elements in order to find the correct insertion point. So it's actually n² / 4\. If you use a binary search, it becomes n log n -- n passes, each perform a log n binary search. (This is usually called _binary insertion sort_.)

However, those numbers are in _comparisons_ , which is typically what sort algorithms are measured by. It assumes that all memory operations are constant time. But you might also want to keep track of swaps or other memory movement. For instance, when you add the memory swaps back to the binary insertion sort, it's O(n²) again, because it still has to perform an average of n / 2 swaps on every pass -- O(n * (log n + n / 2)) = O(n²).

Choice of data structure can also make an impact. Insertion sort is not awesome on memory arrays, because it has to perform a block copy for every insert. However, on linked lists, that single-element shift happens for "free" when you perform the insert.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The only situation where I've actually employed bubble sort in production code was in a situation where the container to be sorted was guaranteed to be at most 5 elements (and usually 3) and was usually already sorted - and calling this sort was done _a lot_. All other sorts proved to have too much startup overhead or too much code that bloated caches.. so yes, I wrote a bubble sort to be used there and it performed quite well. But I would generally _never_ recommend bubble sort for 99.9% of cases - but just once in a blue moon it actually _can_ be the right answer.

</comment><comment><USER5> I re-discovered bubble sort when I was 12, with a deck of cards and a C64. It wasn't until I got to college that I learned it had a name.

I believe it's a very intuitive algorithm, it has likely been rediscovered many times.

</comment><comment><USER6> "Well, I think the bubble sort would be the wrong way to go."

\--Barack Obama

<comment> yoz-y I did not know about this and Googled the line out of curiosity. TIL

<comment> rkuykendall-com Same, googled and found this great story:

[http://fortune.com/2015/08/18/mindware- nisbett/](http://fortune.com/2015/08/18/mindware-nisbett/)

> Shortly after Barack Obama announced he was running for president in the > fall of 2007, Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, interviewed him in front of a > large audience of Google employees. As a joke, Schmidt's first question was, > "What is the most efficient way to sort a million 32- bit integers?" Before > Schmidt could ask a real question, Obama interrupted: "Well, I think the > bubble sort would be the wrong way to go," a response that was in fact > correct. Schmidt slapped his forehead in astonishment, and the room broke > out in applause. Later, in the question-and-answer period, Obama assured his > audience, "I am a big believer in reason and facts and evidence and science > and feedback," and promised that he would run the government accordingly.

> In the audience that day was a product manager named Dan Siroker, who made a > decision on the spot to go to work for Obama. "He had me at bubble sort."</comment></comment></comment>


Time to come Clean Motorola (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://forums.motorola.com/posts/e24b3bfc6d

<comment><USER2> Wow. Here are some highlights (these are from Mark, the moderator/Moto employee:

>I take privacy quite seriously. You notice that we use HTTPS on the site because we feel your privacy is important.

>Lastly, I'm saddened by the fact that you didn't abide by the Motorola Feedback Network Non Disclosure agreement you agreed to upon joining the Motorola Feedback Network. Discussing MFN activities outside designated areas is strictly prohibited. Provided this thread excludes MFN related activities here on out it will remain open. Further violation of the NDA will result in closure of this thread. If you(cythrawl) would like to discuss MFN activities further please email me at firstname.lastname@example.com.

What! You revealed that we spy on you? That's under NDA!

<comment><USER3> Hmm, where did I hear similar argument before? Ah, Snowden breaking his employment contract!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I found this statement there...

        "IT IS YOUR PRIVATE INFORMATION... Look at the permissions, they could read pretty much EVERYTHING you do with the phone and track WHERE you was when you did it, and WHO you did it with.. There is NO REASON why its in there, none at all. And last I checked Motorola Corporation was NOT a Government entity, and if it WAS a Government trying to do this very thing the outrage would be extensive (unless you lived in a Country like North Korea)."

</comment><comment><USER5> The business with the reset count tracking isn't necessarily as creepy as the shovelware/adware apks in the default image, or the serious information leak in activesync in the other Motorola thread.

I'm guessing the firmware update downloader sends some sort of hardware identifier, plus a firmware flash counter, to the update server. This would be the obvious way to prevent re-updating a device that reset itself or was manually reset after a firmware update hosed the system, which would trap the user in a loop. A (device id,firmware revision,reset count) table somewhere in the motosphere isn't exactly PRISM.

Outside a tiny number of hardcore custom ROM tweakers, 21 resets almost certainly indicates some sort of problem.

<comment><USER6> Mark explained it.

> _Upon turning on the phone and registering it on the network you must agree > to the EULA. The only difference between your phone and a MOTOBLUR device is > that you don 't have a user created login. A random login is created for you > to optimize the setup experience. If you don't connect any social networking > applications your phone doesn't connect with our servers._

It involves a hardware ID, and a profile that is created when the device is initially synced. It may also send a "firmware flash counter" but it wouldn't be necessary.

<comment><USER5> But the OP said he was using cyanogenmod before, is he claiming that the hardware phones home even when he's not using the motorola firmware?

<comment><USER6> I don't think so. I think his claim was that the hardware phones home under the Motorola firmware, and that the EULA hadn't spelled that out clearly, and that Motorola had not been as forthright as they should or that they may even have been deceptive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The scariest part of this thread is the responses from the user 'Poko' a little bit further down. Go ahead an read them — I'm still not sure if that's an astroturf account or not.

<comment><USER8> Do you have a screenshot? Looks like it has been deleted.

Edit: Oops. Never mind, you meant a user on Motorola's website. Please disregard this comment everyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Now that Motorola is owned by Google, I wonder what Google has to say about this?

<comment><USER10> "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place," Schmidt. [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/07/schmidt_on_privacy/](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/07/schmidt_on_privacy/)

<comment><USER11> Every time I read that claim I feel like sharing this article: "Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide'" [https://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even- if/12...](https://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127461/)

<comment><USER10> Thanks. Just for the record, don't be thinking I agree with that statement. I consider it among the creepier quotes Schmidt has produced, and he has a great selection to choose from.

[http://www.stateofsearch.com/top-15-of-eric-schmidts- remarka...](http://www.stateofsearch.com/top-15-of-eric-schmidts-remarkable- quotes/)

<comment><USER12> Hmmm scary and it doesn't even get the best one:

"Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it," he said. Google implants, he added, probably crosses that line.[1]

[1] [http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/10/google...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/10/googles- ceo-the-laws-are-written-by-lobbyists/63908/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The wider internet community needs to know about this.

</comment><comment><USER14> I didn't even know that they were dirty.

*Time to come clean, Motorola

</comment><comment><USER15> Wow!</comment>


Simplicity (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/simplicity/ <comment><USER2> Everybody agrees that simplicity is good. So more interesting question is: Is there anything desirable in complexity?

One argument that I've got from biology is: The simplest possible system (code, living organism) is fragile. Any change, however minor, is likely to break it. A nice chubby complex system, on the other hand, is likely to be more resilient. You may change it a bit and it's still likely to work somehow.

<comment><USER3> > A nice chubby complex system, on the other hand, is likely to be more > resilient.

You should take a look at tardigrades then (aka water bears), which are approx. 1mm in length, obviously less complex than most living creatures, yet are some of the most resilient animals on earth; highly resistant to extreme temperatures, pressure, radiation, etc.

One way to look at resilience: a relationship between the system and its environment. So when you say resilient, you need to specify, resilient to what? I think a resilient system, is neither too complex, nor too simple, but rather, adapted to its environment.

<comment><USER4> Complexity only gives you resilience in the same way monkeys write Shakespeare. So, while not technically wrong, I wouldn't say it holds water. The old adage of "security through obscurity" comes to mind.

<comment><USER5> That's not complexity but entropy. In terms of entropy you could better Shakespeare by using only one sentence, word or letter for the whole play. As a boy I inhaled the spirit of Mitchell M. Waldrop "Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos" that for some time it was my life dream, maybe still is, to perform some work connected to said institute. I'd say it like that: The amount of features you need to sufficiently (in your metric) model a given system defines its complexity. - Something for which a rigid body is enough: probably not so interesting. Autocatalytical reactions?... Something biochemical maybe more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There will be a never-ending pressure to simplify theories, codebases and anything some other human has done with too many words and too many numbers. By doing so successfully, you make life permanently easier for everyone who comes after you.

</comment><comment><USER7> A big page full of complicated words to explain Simplicity. The irony.

</comment><comment><USER8> Whenever people link to this website, I feel compelled to point out that it should really be called the Stanford Encyclopedia of Analytic Philosophy, lest lay people be misled that _all_ philosophy is like this or shares their concerns.

<comment><USER9> I am a layman. Whenever I see the divide between _analytic philosophy_ and _continental philosophy_ I find it funny, since there is no _continental physics_ or _continental chemistry_.

<comment><USER10> I think this comes from a misunderstanding of what philosophy is. Philosophy is not a science, and can never become one without threatening its current epistemic/ontological role -- objects like falsification, Quine's "best science", proof by contradiction, and argumentation from necessity exist as a _substrate_ for scientific reasoning, and so repositioning them as objects of the science they support would involve circular reasoning[1].

Put another way: to "lift" philosophy into the domain of science would involve defining/formulating the guiding principles of sound/"good" science in their own terms.

(I was educated in the analytic tradition.)

[1]: It's worth noting that this only covers the philosophies of science and mathematics, not things like ethics, aesthetics, existence, &c. I think we can defend investigating the latter subjects as a consequence of science's inability to answer normative questions -- science can only tell us what _is_ , not what _ought_ to be.

<comment><USER11> >Philosophy is not a science, and can never become one without threatening its current epistemic/ontological role

It's worth noting that there are some who disagree and have some good arguments in support of that[0], and that philosophy as _Wissenschaft_ was prevalent until relatively recently. To me, the continental/analytic distinction is a distinction in the methods of inquiry, if it is a valid distinction at all.

[0] [http://www.philosophyisscience.com/](http://www.philosophyisscience.com/)

<comment><USER10> Great points. I guess I should have said that I'm using "science" with a 20th century tinge and from the perspective of analytic thinkers of that period. In that context, I think I'd agree with a description of science as a strict subset of epistemology, specifically the branch of epistemology that dedicates itself to picking out things in the physical world.

Per your link: I wonder what the author of that page thinks of the Gettier problems and whether they constitute "false knowledge."</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Web safe colors - <AUTHOR>

Do you (still) adhere to Web-safe colors for your project? I remember it is crucial to consider it as a best practice 10 years ago due to technology limitation and file size restrictions. Is it still relevant today? <comment><USER2> Just as it was before, but less-so now, it all comes down to who you want viewing your site. There is no single rule about what your site needs to adhere to, nor a single set of best practices that are appropriate for everything.

If you are concerned about your users, a lot of people these days are basically sacrificing accessibility for a better user experience for the non- visually impaired users with a recent browser. That is a bigger problem than web-safe colors by far. Web accessibility may eventually become subject to the ADA: <http://www.ada.gov/></comment>


MySQL Diehard vs. NoSQL Fanboi: The Animated Movie - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2010/09/an-amusing-take-mysql-diehard.php

<comment><USER2> Nice...I'm actually going to try using /dev/null as a data store. It should net me some significant speed gains!</comment>


Many terms commonly used in computer programming originated with Mark I - <AUTHOR> http://sites.harvard.edu/~chsi/markone/language.html <comment><USER2> This article lists 4 terms that it says originated with Mark I. But 3 of those terms were used in the Mark I because they already meant the correct thing. The only term to get effectively a new definition when applied to computers is "bug". So it seems kind of weird to say that e.g. "loop" originated with the Mark I when the definition of the word didn't change.

In fact this kind of brings to mind patents. "ordinary thing, done by a computer" is not particularly significant, neither in terminology nor patentable ideas.

<comment><USER3> That's one of those things that sounds right only in hindsight.

Without the paper tape metaphor, the control flow for repetition might have been called "repeat" or "iterate". The word "loop" is nice and short, but it's an odd thing to say without the physical clue. The word didn't come up in my mathematical proofs class.

Instead of "patch" we probably would have said "fix" (we still sometimes do).

<comment><USER2> The control flow for repetition is in fact called "repeat" in some languages. I don't think the word "loop" stuck around because the metaphor of paper tapes is particularly compelling (especially since we stopped using those a long time ago), I think it stuck around because it's a good _short_ word that means the right thing. And, for example, it's pretty awkward to say something like "a for repeat", but "a for loop" is nice and simple. We probably would have ended up on this word even without paper tapes.

<comment><USER3> Maybe, but the combination of "loop" and "break" makes a lot more sense if you imagine physically breaking a loop of paper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Amazing to see how computer science imported these terms.. since it moved from classical mechanics to electromagnetism, electronics and now to quantum mechanics.. how the future will look like ? patterns, probabilities, uncertainty, learning, self-organization... much likely all those terms are going to disappear from the jargon .. a "bug" will have no meaning

</comment><comment><USER5> Can anyone tell what these say: [http://sites.harvard.edu/~chsi/markone/images/BugDrawings.jp...](http://sites.harvard.edu/~chsi/markone/images/BugDrawings.jpg)

I can only half-read it. I was trained in cursive, but have not used it in years.

<comment><USER6> July 27 - table worm

July 28 - NRL (Naval research laboratory) bug. He who sends wrong data

July 26 - Kitchie Boo Boo Bug. He who goes around loosening relays

:) He who brings good data.

I found the result by googling the ones I could read, which led me to this book: [https://books.google.com/books?id=M3AwCYjYGKQC&pg=PA43&dq=%2...](https://books.google.com/books?id=M3AwCYjYGKQC&pg=PA43&dq=%22he+who+brings+good+data%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjt_6va4urRAhWC0YMKHYx_BRUQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=%22he%20who%20brings%20good%20data%22&f=false)</comment></comment>


A database for medical implants. Is this a startup opportunity? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/29/business/29hip.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=login&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> Dear yummyfajitas, what do you know about this opportunity? I saw the article as well. I would love to talk further</comment>


Twitter Engineering Manager Leaves Company Because Of Diversity Issues - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/03/twitter-engineering-manager-leslie-miley-leaves-company-because-of-diversity-issues/#.fcdsojv:OvEW <comment><USER2> The article suggests hat there are no people of color remaining at Twitter in leadership in engineering or product, now that the person in question has departed. Are there no Asian directors+ in Twitter engineering or product management? Or do Asians not count in this regard?

<comment><USER3> No they don't, they are not an underrepresented group.

<comment><USER2> On the contrary, they are a very underrepresented group in corporate upper management.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Correct Title is:

"Twitter Engineering Manager Leslie Miley Leaves Company Because Of Diversity"

<comment><USER4> Too clarify, when I commented the story had a much different title. It was much different from the different title the story has now.</comment></comment>


Tools designed to fight trolls are being used to crack down on dissent - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/2/6083647/facebook-s-report-abuse-button-has-become-a-tool-of-global-oppression

<comment><USER2> "Tools designed to silence people with unpopular views are being used to silence people with unpopular views."

</comment><comment><USER3> You'd think that Facebook would weight people's abuse reports if they ever abuse them. So perhaps 10 flags is enough to temporarily block a page if the reporting users are in good standing. But if they're proven to have bad judgement, then require far more reports. Same for "creating dozens of accounts" \- that's some basic level stuff I'd expect FB able to deal with.

<comment><USER4> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Trolls _are_ dissent; they're just not always particularly polite about it.

This is almost the Platonic archetype of trolling:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal)

<comment><USER6> I don't think that's true. Or if it is, it places no value at all on dissent itself - anyone you disagree with on the internet would be a 'troll'.

<comment><USER7> Many people on the internet immediately minimize any argument they don't agree with as "trolling". It's easier to just call the other person a malintentioned degenerate than to actually address the points they raise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I imagine the trolls in question feel pretty darn good about this, eh?</comment>


Bank of America's Technology of the Future. Did they invent a time machine? - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4QHVWvwd6M

<comment><AUTHOR> This is on the front page of Bank of America right now. This is their hottest new technology.</comment>


What Javascript is not safe in a open-ended script? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/q/10826186/744249

<comment><USER2> Surely censoring the functionality is completely impossible, due to the dynamic nature of JS?

alert("blah")

can just as easily be made to be

window["alert"]("blah"), where the string 'alert' could be made by a very convoluted manner. Solving this would be akin to solving the halting problem, no?

</comment><comment><USER3> window[['t', 'r', 'e', 'l', 'a'].reverse().join('')]("blah");</comment>


Tunneling traffic through DNS, a.k.a free internet in cafes/airports - <AUTHOR> http://www.dnstunnel.de/

<comment><USER2> This is a great hack, although it requires a lot of work. I have it installed on my server and my Mac, and surfing/e-mailing works fine.

I have been toying with the idea of having the client part ported to my iPhone, so I can use paywall wifi directly from a mobile device. This would require porting the Perl client code over to C.

<comment><USER3> I've always wondered when someone would use EC2 and launch a free service with ICMP/DNS tunneling... and release a dead-simple client app.

I'm guessing most of this wifi infrastructure would take quite awhile before very much of it was closed up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is also possible by tunneling through ICMP: <http://www.cs.uit.no/~daniels/PingTunnel/>

<comment><USER5> Generally though wireless hotspots allow DNS traffic out (the DNS server isn't filtered) but not ICMP. In fact if anything is filtered it tends to be ICMP. I'm not really aware of any situations where ICMP tunnelling is useful. Anyone know of any?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I use iodine as a wrapper for this, and I use it _very_ frequently (as I fly internationally at least once every few weeks). It usually sits as a service on my home server. So far the only airport where I didn't make it to work was in Miami (where I connected though a socks tunnel though my iphone 3g anyways).

dns tunelling is slow, but handy for console/screen situations. I usually use it to download the newspaper before getting into the plane (a bunch of wgets) and refresh the rss feeds on newsbeuter.

</comment><comment><USER7> Use Kismac to collect MAC addresses with significant packets in/out, clone a MAC, ssh -D9091 to my remote server, tunnel everything through my local SOCKS5 port 9091. Works well enough for me.

<comment><USER8> Just thinking off the top of my head, but wouldn't cloning the MAC cause conflicts with the existing MAC on the network?

I've done something similar with cloning my iPhone MAC to get free WiFi access on my laptop using the free AT&T WiFi provided to iPhones.

But if what you're saying actually works, this seems like a dead simple way of getting free access. I already have Kismac installed, so I'll definitely try it. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I might be wrong, but wouldn't this not help the situation at airports where the AP resolves all DNS requests to a page that is like "pay for service!"?

I was under the impression that in those configurations the AP intercepts all the DNS packets and responds with a fixed IP.

It would be nice to get around port blocking filters though...

<comment><USER10> No, I think that's the firewall modifying the headers. I still encounter the portal page when I use a different DNS (although the portal hostname doesn't resolve). I'm not sure if they have even figured out how to do DNS authentication yet.

<comment><USER11> Not exactly. The general term for the system that captures your first page is "captive portal". The short version is they intercept your first Internet- bound web request and send you a HTTP redirect to their login site. Once you give the portal whatever it needs to authorize you the local firewall is configured to allow your traffic out.

Generally captive portals will leave your DNS alone. They don't really have a lot of choice about this: if they poison your name cache you won't be able to get to your home page. Windows used to (still may) hold on to names for a minimum period regardless of TTL. A fair number of laptops have custom DNS. Combine those two and you can almost always get correct recursive DNS and frequently UDP 53 out.

<comment><USER9> Not sure about this. I've tried to use OpenDNS behind a "buy my wireless for 24 hours" at an airport and I still got the page requesting me to buy a page.

Also, even when I pinged servers the IPs were resolving to their "purchase" page. Unfortunately, I didn't have an IP of a site on hand to see if I could request by IP out.

<comment><USER12> If the captive portal is rerouting every IP packet (apart from DNS lookups) from an unauthorized MAC to the same central server (so that it can spoof the HTTP redirect to the payment page), this is exactly what you'd expect to see.

It doesn't matter what DNS you're using - the DNS lookups should resolve to correct IPs otherwise your local DNS cache would be poisoned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've set this up and it's pretty slow. Cool hack though. Better off with 3G card or tethering bluetooth on a 2G network. Useful with international travel though where phones get sketchy...

</comment><comment><USER13> Won't this be too slow to be useful for anything except a proof of concept?

<comment><USER14> There's some overhead in each packet -- maybe a 4x increase in the number of bytes -- and bouncing between DNS servers will give you an increase in latency -- maybe an extra 500kbps -- but it won't be so bad as to make this unusable. I imagine IP-over-DNS-over-neighbour's-wireless would be much faster than IP- over-phone-line in most cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> >> I offer to set up a subdomain for you which delegates all requests (see above) to your fake nameserver.

Isn't that just like publishing-to-all-hackers your "not so secure" server?

</comment><comment><USER16> Does anyone know how secure this is? I'm assuming that the traffic is unencrypted, so technically your packets could be intercepted.

<comment><USER17> pretty much as reliable as IP, and that is not reliable.

put TCP and UDP on top of it and it works fine.

use a VPN and go through that and you're good to go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's a great way to bypass firewalls. Wasn't this used in a worm in the 90s?

</comment><comment><USER19> >...called OzymanDNS ...

Ozymandias? Haha, is that a Watchmen reference? If so, how apropos. "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" Not the folks running open hotspots.

</comment><comment><USER20> I refuse to call myself a hacker until I can test this. Hot!</comment>


Ask HN: How do you deal with disk space and docker deployments? - <AUTHOR> Just started to have some work with Amazon EC3 and in the same day I got to fill 25 Gb of disks with the volumes, images and containers.<p>Is there a common sense strategy to prevent this? for the current moment it feels that I will always need more disk space <comment><USER2> Not directly related, but on the topic of Docker we use Elastic Beanstalk at work. I found that all output to stdout along with loadbalancer/nginx logs seem to get saved on the instance. I've had instances fill up because of log files since the beginning of the instance. No problem if you kill instances often, though. We deploy new releases by creating new environments, testing, then swapping the dns.

</comment><comment><USER3> There are some useful tips on Awesome Docker on reducing image sizes - [https://github.com/veggiemonk/awesome-docker#optimizing- imag...](https://github.com/veggiemonk/awesome-docker#optimizing-images)

</comment><comment><USER4> Use smaller images, like alpine linux, or just busybox based.</comment>


The man who sold Minecraft for $2.5B reveals the empty side of success - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ive-never-felt-more-isolated-153600734.html

<comment><USER2> He seems to be lonely because he has a lonely life. There are plenty of happy people both wealthy and poor. They have found out what keeps them going and work hard to do it. Now he has the wealth to get support and attempt to determine what an help him keep going and working hard.

I'm neither wealthy nor surrounded by wealth. Some of my friends are driven to obtain great wealth for various reasons such as improving the education in their hometown or preserving more of the planet. These days I'm happy with the riches of holding my wife's hand and solving problems. Just last night I helped my friend's kid solve how to fix the wooden blocks most efficiently in a wooden box. Soon after they were dumped out in a pile on the floor. Success and failure are transient.

</comment><comment><USER3> These articles always bring out a bunch of people saying basically "suck it up you loser".

It's really irritating that someone talking about their mental health is dismissed because they're rich.

<comment><USER4> It's a matter of scale. The amount of money he has could give a $70,000 yearly salary for 10 years to ~3,500 penniless Syrian refugee families. It's not that anyone wants him to suffer. It's the fact that the suffering he feels is dwarfed by the suffering he could erase.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Life is hard. Death, that great pressure, is coming for all of us. Staying motivated after your "great success" is not guaranteed.

Therapy can help.

</comment><comment><USER6> He's got 2.5B. So, want something to do, something that is worthwhile?

Go setup a charity. One which is your passion. Go setup schools at cheap locations, with good enough equipment and teach coding and IT to the poor/disadvantaged.

Don't just sit there and cry about having nothing the other side of it.

Can't believe this attitude.

</comment><comment><USER7> Boo hoo. He got an insanely great payout and now he can really spend time doing whatever he wants. Depression affects the rich as well as the poor but not having to worry about making a living takes a nice chunk of that burden off his shoulders.</comment>


Schroedinger's Cat Molecules Give Rise to Exquisitely Detailed Movies [video] - <AUTHOR> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4x_dAUMTsF8 <comment><USER2> Link to press release from SLAC: [https://www6.slac.stanford.edu/news/2016-09-21-schroedingers...](https://www6.slac.stanford.edu/news/2016-09-21-schroedingers- cat-molecules-give-rise-exquisitely-detailed-movies.aspx)</comment>


Ask HN: Approaching a Company with a Bad Website - <AUTHOR> I see bad websites alot. I work remotely and alot of my clients are from refers or word of mouth. It is great but I want to expand my market beyond that. How do you approach companies with website that could need major improvement (UI/UX, SEO, re-branding, etc?) <comment><USER2> You don't worry about the website. Smart businesses worry about generating revenue, decreasing overhead, improving their image in the eyes of their customers, or reducing risk. Worry about helping a company with those things... you may find out that their "bad" web design doesn't matter in the slightest or in weird cases it might actually be on purpose.

<comment><USER3> Yeah this is a great way to tackle it. Image and branding comes along for the ride. Even if it's your desire - the client's desire is typically going to be functionality, security, usability, accessibility, etc. All of which are a means to an end for a lone wolf designer/engineer. Listen and learn from them about their pain points before promoting your own skills or favorite parts of the industry.

<comment><USER4> "Listen and learn from them about their pain points" goes straight to the heart of it. An ugly website might be a normal nothing to them. But one of your related skills might be all they've ever wanted, and you'll only ever know by looking at what _they_ want to solve (versus what you want to pitch to them).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some copywriter wrote some advice about that: [https://www.earlytorise.com/the-awful-truth-about- unsolicite...](https://www.earlytorise.com/the-awful-truth-about-unsolicited- advice-part-i-a-big-mistake-you-dont-want-to-make/)

May be a good start!</comment>


Show HN: Oroboros – templated configuration server - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/eggsby/oroboros

<comment><AUTHOR> I made oroboros for working with large collections of app and server configuration that need to be shared across many systems.

Previously I had been using an automation tool to template my configuration variables and found myself frustrated that I couldn't access their processed values outside of the tool.

Oroboros exposes all configuration as JSON over HTTP by recursively templating & assembling configuration files under some directory. This makes it simple to track & release changes through version control.

This project solves a particular need of mine, hopefully someone else find will find useful it as well.

Happy Hacking,

Thomas</comment>


Warning: Google Talk Phishing Scam Spreading Like Wildfire - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2009/02/24/viddyho/ <comment><USER2> It's because people have gotten so used to giving away their email credentials to sites when they sign up so that they can have all their contacts imported.

Google, Facebook, et al., could help improve security against this type of thing by creating a way for people to expose a contact list without giving away their password.

<comment><USER3> You mean like this?

<http://code.google.com/apis/contacts/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Every digg application that asks users for their credentials is conditioning users to fall for phishing.

There are enough people that don't realize the underlying architecture of the web and think that their browser is to be trusted, not a particular server (if you think I'm kidding ask your parents!).

<comment><USER5> s/digg/twitter

<comment><USER4> ah yes, absolutely, excuse me...</comment></comment></comment>


Twitter is down - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com <comment><USER2> Don't worry everyone, I shared it on Identica: [https://identi.ca/technicalfault/note/Wrp6LVJxSay9nQt8XIgyWQ](https://identi.ca/technicalfault/note/Wrp6LVJxSay9nQt8XIgyWQ)

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.isitdownrightnow.com/twitter.com.html](http://www.isitdownrightnow.com/twitter.com.html) It's up now.

</comment><comment><USER4> Good now for me.

They haven't posted about it on the status blog yet: [http://status.twitter.com/](http://status.twitter.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> What happened ?</comment>


Story Time - <AUTHOR> http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2009/03/story-time.html

<comment><USER2> "He asked me to spell my name, and I said: "Y". He wrote "W". So far, so good. I really didn't want these fuckers to have my personal information just because they gave me an oil change, anyway.

I said "e", and he wrote "i". Wow, this was new.

I said "g, g" and he wrote "jj". Cool!"

The guy's first language was apparently French and wasn't good at English.

letters with the same sound in French and English:

      French English
      é a  same
      i e  same
      f f  same
      g j  similar (in french we don't make the implicit D sound)
      j g  similar (in french we don't make the implicit D sound)
      l l  similar
      m m  same
      n n  same
      o o  same
      q q  similar (in french we say "ku" instead of "kiou")
      r r  similar
      s s  same
      t t  similar (té instead of tee)
      v v  similar (vé instead of vee)
      w w  similar (double-V instead of double-U)
      z z  similar (zed instead of zee)

</comment><comment><USER3> I admire Steve for just blogging what he wants to blog.

The key to storytelling is to make a point but make it personal. One key to make a story personal is to reveal vulnerability. Who cares about your successes?! (People can't always relate to I-climbed-Mount-Everest but they can relate to I-screwed-up).

</comment><comment><USER4> Not about code/software/hacking. Dont check this unless you want to waste some time

<comment><USER5> Some time? I guess I don't read fast enough to get all that into "some".

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I find it hilarious that Steve has this reputation for long blog posts... indeed, the vast majority are extremely long... and yet every time one is posted there are half a dozen complaints about how long they are.

What did you expect? It's not like the guy is changing up his format all of a sudden.

<comment><USER7> One of the reasons why I ditched Reddit for HN is because every time (yes, every single time) a Yegge article was posted, the comment thread was inevitably 90% whining or wisecracking about the length. I think it's a good measure of how much a community has degraded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Complilation of davesecretary's stories:

<http://www.storylog.com/time-for-some-stories-corrected/>

<comment><USER9> I find that steve's stories are much funnier than these. These seem like flat jokes. I usually get flat jokes, but I didn't get davesecretary's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Please stop bitching about the length. Everyone knows Yegge writes long posts.

smg's comment about not software-related _is_ useful because the people that do read Yegge generally do it for the software perspective.

<comment><USER11> Great minds say more with less.

<comment><USER12> Agreed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you like davesecretary's stories, you should check out the book of poems "Mother Said" ([http://www.amazon.com/Mother-Said-Hal- Sirowitz/dp/0517704978...](http://www.amazon.com/Mother-Said-Hal- Sirowitz/dp/0517704978/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237000815&sr=8-7)). Here is one of the poems from the Amazon reviews:

Deformed Finger

      Don't stick your finger in the ketchup bottle,
      Mother said. It might get stuck, &
      then you'll have to wait for your father
      to get home to pull it out. He
      won't be happy to find a dirty fingernail
      squirming in the ketchup that he's going to use
      on his hamburger.  He'll yank it out so hard
      that for the rest of your life you won't
      be able to wear a ring on that finger.
      And if you ever get a girlfriend, &
      you hold hands, she's bound to ask you
      why one of your fingers is deformed,
      & you'll be obligated to tell her how
      you didn't listen to your mother, &
      insisted on playing with the ketchup bottle,
      & she'll get to thinking, he probably won't
      listen to me either, & she'll push your hand away.

</comment><comment><USER14> While I don't really think this is fitting for HN, I do really enjoy the stories that inspired this post. Davesecretary originally posted the stories on a vinyl trading message board (<http://board.vivalavinyl.org>). I think it's really awesome that those stories ballooned and got popular on Reddit / other social news sites. They're great.

</comment><comment><USER15> One opinion on which of these to read: Number 3 is funny when read directly after reading number 2, but not so much otherwise. Number 9 actually made me laugh, so I recommend reading that one. Skip the rest if you're on a time budget. Note that story 1 starts after the first horizontal rule, 2 after the next, etc.

</comment><comment><USER16> Looks like Steve's back to his old drunken rants in a whole new way.

</comment><comment><USER17> I always need to look at the size of the scrollbar before I start on a Yegge blog.

</comment><comment><USER18> Looks pretty lengthy, ranty, meandering, probably boring.

I hate to say this, but...

TL;DR

<comment><USER19> I agree with your criticism and downmodded you for TL;DR, because it is the intellectual equivalent of barbarians at the gate.

You hate to say it. The next guy will think he's subverting the meme. The third guy will think it is funny. The fourth guy will do it because he thinks the site expects someone to say it. And he will be right.

<comment><USER18> Fair enough :-) I shan't do it again - hesitated to do it even this once!

<comment><USER20> A small positive from the "TL;DR" post: It finally occurred to me to do a bit of research and find out what it stands for. Now I have a greater understanding of why I get a slummy feeling when I see it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> 6933 words. I don't think I have that kind of spare time right now.

If it's just short stories then why doesn't he split them up into multiple posts?

<comment><USER22> Or you could read them as though they were posted as multiple posts?</comment></comment>


Don't let your children use TikTok, former MI6 intelligence chief urges - <AUTHOR> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/09/dont-let-children-use-tiktok-former-mi6-intelligence-chief-urges/ <comment><USER2> Or any social media to be honest. I don't see why Tik Tok is special. They all do the same things to make money.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Beijing-owned social media app could serve as an "entry-point" for Chinese > hackers

Is ByteDance a public company? Why would it be written like this? No one says that Amazon is a "Seattle-owned" company.

edit: Maybe the downvoters can clarify? As a non-native English speaker I may have misunderstood the meaning of the mentioned term. Is it common to refer to companies in that way?

<comment><USER4> China's government has a lot more control over private business. If the mayor of Seattle had more authority over Amazon than anyone working within it, it would be fair to say that Amazon is "Seattle-owned".

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't understand why children are allowed to use any social media what so ever.

</comment><comment><USER6> Nigel Inkster works for International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS)

Transparify gave IISS its lowest rating, 'deceptive', on funding transparency. That is even less transparent than the Trump Whitehouse.

Here's guessing that some of their funding was arranged by Mike Pompous-Ass.</comment>


3 people, 4 months, minimalist living in the bay area expense sheet - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uYkUCPH1axLcvCIBKmvBuhSdukXCLSLwnLbt4veTG8E <comment><USER2> Is the living supposed to be minimalist, or is the expense sheet supposed to be minimalist? Because one seems true, whereas the other appears to rely on a fairly maximalist read of minimalism.

</comment><comment><USER3> Something has been removed - a $7,500 'plane'?</comment>


Wake Up Startups, You're Behind the Times - <AUTHOR> http://jnorthrop.me/2012/06/1/wake-startups-youre-behind-times/

<comment><USER2> You went around parading on a few posts on HN with this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes I did, and have for quite some time now too. I try to make it a point to let those site owners know that there is a growing percentage of people who see a lack of a policy as a problem -- and one they can easily fix.

Bottom line is that I strongly believe there is an opportunity to build trust with users that many are missing.</comment></comment>